Best eCommerce Website Builders

Online store creation is a challenging process that requires maximum investment of effort and time. The problem becomes much more complicated, if you don’t have neither time nor experience and knowledge sufficient to cope with the task successfully. In this case, you won’t go without an effective, affordable and trustworthy web building solution – a website builder. These tools are easy to use and ensure maximum functionality at reasonable cost. They work great for newbies and web building pros, offering lots of features that will make your eCommerce web building experience awesome.

There are many website builders available out there, but you should make a profound search to get the best one, which meets your business requirements and preferences most of all. The right choice will help you save much effort and time in future, thus making it possible to focus on the promotion of your eCommerce website.

Niche competition is quite tough here and a person, who lacks experience in website building, may face lots of problems, when adopting the decision. What website builder works best for online stores? What criteria should be considered when making the choice? How is it possible to avoid extra expenses and gain maximum benefits? To answer these questions, let’s review the best eCommerce website builders to have an idea of what they can offer you.

What is the Best eCommerce Website Builder?

There are many features eCommerce website builders should offer to ensure maximum performance and functionality. However, some of them are a must for any web building tool used to create online stores. Thus, a quality and trustworthy eCommerce website builder should be:

Mobile Friendly. If you are the owner of an online store, it’s a must to make it accessible on the web. Most people have got used to shopping in the global network. This is more convenient and time-saving. Consequently, a website builder used to create such online stores should also preferably be mobile-friendly, allowing you to make the changes and manage a website on the go.

SEO Friendly. SEO optimization matters a lot, when it comes to successful promotion of your newly created online store. There are many eCommerce websites, which focus on the same niche you do. That’s why the problem of effective SEO optimization remains burning for lots of online store owners. If a website builder you choose for this purpose is SEO friendly, the chances that your online store will have high search engine ranking will notably increase – just like the amount of sales and profit.

Easy to Manage. An eCommerce website builder should be easy to manage. You don’t have to waste too much effort and time, exploring the system and “fighting” with complicated codes or website builder features. The dashboard as well as the interface of the system should be intuitive and understandable even for newbies. The simpler the system is – the faster you’ll achieve the desired result.

Affordable in Price. The cost issue should not be overlooked as well, when it comes to choosing an eCommerce website builder. This is especially true, if you are just starting your business career and wish to get the most out of your eСommerce web building experience. Fortunately, modern website builders that specialize in online store creation frequently offer reasonable plans with a diversity of features included.

Shopify: The Best Drag-and-Drop eCommerce Website Builder Software

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce website builders. It has won immense popularity with business owners, who need quality, functional and professionally looking online stores. This is a specialized web building tool, which is used for launching online stores only, but this allows focusing on the task to get the best result.

The website builder is powerful and functional. It is chock-full of advanced, eCommerce-specific features. It can boast an extensive collection of appealing eCommerce templates, which are both free and paid.

Design customization tools the system offers are strong as well. What’s interesting, each template requires individual customization, which makes it possible to design a website with regard to your needs. By adjusting the settings, you can create your own header, footer, sidebar, fonts, shopping cart and show window design etc. If you have coding skills, you can get code access to edit your website as needed.

The dashboard of the system looks pretty simple, but it contains lots of settings and options. You may find an app store here, which offers versatile applications that can enhance your online store performance (sales, social networks, statistics, marketing, management etc.). CSV-file upload is available here as well.

Shopify eCommerce Pros:

Shopify is definitely one of the best eCommerce solutions. The platform excels at functionality, which makes it possible to create and manage eCommerce websites and sell products at the retail storefront. The service uses the Point of Sale software that allows accepting orders in the offline mode and launching several staff accounts at a time.

Business owners value an opportunity to create the receipts online, view and analyze the sales statistics, control the account balance and utilize other options that help them manage their businesses in the best way possible. The Future Publishing option is the highlight of the system. It allows publishing blog posts, products reviews and catalogue collections that are going to appear on sale in the future. Shopify is a nice eCommerce CMS, which is also optimized for mobile marketing.

Shopify eCommerce Cons:

The major disadvantage of the system is its cost, which is a bit higher than that of other similar platforms. If you run a small business, Shopify pricing plans may hit you on the pocket. However, if you own a medium or a large business and plan to expand it by means of launching and managing several online stores, then investing in Shopify is a reasonable solution that will eventually pay off. The easiest way to start selling with Shopify is to add ‘Shopify Button’ to your website. It will cost $9/mo. The other paid plans that include full set of website builder tool range from $29/mo to $299/mo.

Shopify is a specialized eCommerce website builder, the quality and functionality of which are on the top level. The system is powerful and flexible enough to ensure convenient and effective web building experience. The range of features and options it offers is quite extensive and each user may choose the required functionality based on the web building skills and expertise rate. Shopify is quite expensive, but its cost is reasonable and is worth the result you will eventually get.

Wix: The Easiest eCommerce Website Builder for Beginners

Wix is a universal website builder, which can also be used to create online stores. The system is simple, easy-to-use, functional and user-friendly. It can be effectively used both by newbies and experienced web developers. Due to the versatility of the service, you can not only create a webstore, but also add a blog or any other extensions you wish to it from the Wix App Market. This allows bringing your online store functionality and performance to the top notch level.

Wix comes with lots of quality templates for e-store projects, so, you can find a website design for any taste here. All in all, there are more than 38 appealing eCommerce templates here. What’s more, the website builder has the integrated engine used to create online stores. The functionality of the system adheres to the existing eCommerce web building requirements. You can create products and their categories here, adjust payment parameters, discounts, taxes, shipping details, order statistics and general settings.

Wix also offers lots of marketing apps, an opportunity to organize appealing previews, a convenient shopping cart and awesome designs. If you need a large online store, Wix is not the best choice for this purpose However, the website builder is appealing, convenient and affordable for users, who wish to create online stores with a genuinely impressive design.

These features make the system one of the best website builders with a visual editor suitable for online store creation. Wis has a separate eCommerce plan, the cost of which is currently $16.50 per month that is more than affordable. The system frequently offers discounts and bonuses to its clients. This allows reducing the cost of an online store to the desired rate.

Wix eCommerce Pros:

Wix is one of the easiest online store creating platforms. With its drag-and-drop editing options and availability of customizable templates, you can create a quality eCommerce website in less than no time. The WYSIWYG feature puts you in charge of the web creation process and it’s definitely a benefit. Who else knows how your online store should look, if not you?

Another feature that makes Wix a perfect eCommerce building tool is the availability of customizable options, such as tax management, coupons and versatile payment methods to mention a few. Wix also allows creating websites that are optimized for mobile devices.

Wix eCommerce Cons:

If you need to launch a large eCommerce website, then it’s better to keep looking for a website builder that is rich in the niche specific features.

Wix is a powerful drag-and-drop website builder used for universal web building purposes. You can create any website type with Wix, including a quality online store. The system comes with a visual editor, which makes it possible to control all the changes you make during the web building process. There are dozens of professional eCommerce templates here and a special integrated widget used to build online stores from scratch.

Wix is appealing, functional and convenient for everyone, irrespective of the web building experience a user has. The system isn’t a nice choice for large online stores, but its functionality is more than enough to create small or medium eCommerce websites with stunning design.

Other Popular Platforms to Create an eCommerce Website

An opportunity to implement the ideas mentioned above into real life may seem close to impossible to the inexperienced users. What’s more, many of them lack money to order custom website creation. These are the most popular reasons to give up the idea to launch an online business.

It turns out, though, that it is possible to create an online store by means of using special programs and services. The latter include numerous paid and free website management systems, such as:

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, which are the free platforms that make it possible to create various types of websites, including trading platforms. The functionality of an online store is realized by setting up special plugins here;

OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, which are the open-code CMS meant to manage eCommerce projects. They come with integrated solutions, which can be expanded by means of using the required modules;

PinncaleCart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, which are the paid platforms that come with vast functionality and features required to launch powerful online stores;

The major disadvantage of all these systems is that they need a serious and deep skills in programming and markup languages. If the words PHP, HTML, CSS sound for the first time to you, then it would be better to launch an eCommerce website with website builders.

How a Successful Web Store Should Look Like

An online store is a kind of the software that makes it possible to buy and sell products in the online mode. The success and efficacy of the project depends upon the convenience of customers to shop on the web and the opportunity for the website owners to manage the resource. The following factors contribute to the increase of sales and traffic growth:

Setting up popular payment systems. The majority of users, who have ever shopped on the web, have made sure about the convenience of paying for the products online. Integration of versatile payment systems to the website makes it possible for the clients to purchase the products they need without leaving the website, which notably increases the amount of sales. Apart from that, the availability of several payment options increases the customers’ trust to the resource.

The elaborate structure of the product catalogue. The more positions the store offers, the more complicated it is for the users to find the products they need. Consequently, the structure of a website should not be limited to the categories and subcategories only. The website navigation should also make it possible to filter the products by name, manufacturer, size, color and other characteristics.

Detailed compilation of product cards. By visiting the page of a product, a customer should get its detailed characteristics. This may help the clients make the right choice and will relieve the store managers from the unnecessary calls. Product descriptions and their photos should be unique and not copied from other resources, because both the customers and search engines don’t favor plagiarism.

An offer to choose related products. If a website comes with an opportunity to offer related products, it makes sense to add a block of such items, which will serve the additional sales tool.

The use of triggers. When it comes to online marketing, triggers prove to be useful psychological methods that encourage the customers to shop at the website and buy something there. The examples of popular triggers include discount offers, free delivery of a product during the specified time interval, product exclusiveness marks, quality certificates demonstration and what not. The use of triggers should always be smart, reasonable and consequent.

Setting up an online consultant. Lots of customers try to avoid phone talks with the managers. That is why, setting up one of the online-consulting systems makes it possible to attract more potential clients and increase the sales.

Bottom Line

The quickest and the most affordable way to create an online store is a website builder. Shopify and Wix make it possible to develop simple and complicated projects for reasonable cost. Some of them offer the same options absolutely for free. Integrated functionality of website builders is thoroughly thought over and has all the required tools used to create successful online stores.

Apart from the convenience of use, this solution attracts business owners by the simplicity of management and an opportunity to test business niches without serious financial investments into the development of professional websites.

So if you plan to create a large online store with more than 1000 of selling goods or with international trade opportunities, Shopify is your choice. But if you are going to launch a mid-sized store with a stunning and unique design – then Wix is on your side.